It's a tough challenge for any team leader or manager who is managing one or more staff. Most managers are not taught how to prevent people from leaving, neither are they trained to recognize the signs.

The first step a manager needs in order to build or re-build employee engagement is recognizing the fact that the employee might be leaving. Unless you pay attention to your employees, you will not know these signs. Once you start paying attention, you’ll have a reference point of behavior to work with. Here are the top 10 tell tale signs I check against to get a reading on wether an employee is planning to leave or not.

1. Disengagement with Tasks and Duties

If a person is bored or unhappy with what they’re doing, they will immediately disengage with their tasks and duties, and won’t really care much finishing tasks. They’re not motivated enough to do anything. You can spot this when you see the quality of work they produce or in the number of tasks they finish. They might all of a sudden start missing deadlines on a regular basis.

2. Change In Attendance and Leave Patterns

Depending on what your organization is known for, the person planning to leave might take all their vacation days off, or use them to go to interviews. If your organization don’t normally pay out the “paid leave” entitlements, they will take those days off instead of battle your finance department for cashing out. I’ve seen too many people take half day off come into the office in a nicely pressed shirt and slacks and resign in a couple of days. Once you’re experienced at this, you’d be able to tell right away who’s leaving and who’s staying, and even who has an appointment for an interview!

3. Taking More Frequent Breaks

When you’re disengaged with what you’re doing, you’re bored and you’d try and explore the outside world or the water cooler. If you’re employee used to sit at the desk most of the time and start taking frequent breaks, ask them if they’re more health conscious or they’re really bored with the job they’re doing. Most people do not like change, and as a result, they might appear more agitated than usual.

4. Disregard for Performance

If you’re a supervisor of the person and address not being engaged and express concerns of their performance, pay attention to what their response is like. If they really cared, they’d make amends to improve performance, but if they’re ready to move on to the next gig, they will simply not care of what you do or say. Given the fact that very few Indian firms actually ‘let go’ of people, some passive aggressive employees will even challenge (read: dare) you to fire them.

5. Disinterest in Team or Collaborative Work

Folks who are thinking of getting out of the organization will take a back seat when it comes to brainstorm sessions or meetings where you’re trying to improve business processes or troubleshoot things. They will automatically choose not to talk, unless of course they naturally do not talk in meetings. This is where you’ll need those reference points, so you notice a change in behavior.

6. Updating LinkedIn Profile

I can tell if my ex-colleagues are getting ready to hop their jobs when I get recommendation requests on LinkedIn. Traditionally people would update their CVs but now they also update their LinkedIn profiles. If the person doesn’t really maintain their profile and all of a sudden starts augmenting it, it should raise a flag for you.

7. Checking Out Other Company Websites

Certain job skills are industry specific and there would only be a handful of companies that people can apply to. The laziest job seekers will contact their ex-colleagues and ask if the company is hiring and check out those sites. The more active job seekers will start surfing other company sites from the same industry. Back in the day it used to be pretty funny in Kolkata because there were only a couple of Internet marketing firms and after quitting one company, they’d join the only other company in town so it was still the same darn people.

8. Brushing Up On Technical Knowledge

Folks who are preparing for interviews will search technical questions and answers so they do well in interviews. Once a person, who normally do not ask questions start researching on topics that has nothing to do with what they're doing, there's a good chance that they might be brushing up for a real test. I used to know a horrible Group Leader who always picked people’s brains and steal ideas to look good in front of the boss. When it came the time for him to leave, he asked people’s opinions and ideas of the latest tech trends so he could regurgitate them in his interviews.

9. Pre-empting Exit Procedures

If you have exit policies in place for ‘knowledge transfers’ or training subordinates for a week before the person leaves, that person might start those procedures early on even before they resign. This way they’ll spend the least amount of time in their exit clearing everything that their office wants.

10. Your Company is Traditionally a “Stepping Stone” Company

A stepping stone company is where people go to build up their profile or get their job so they can get into another big brand company. It’s not a place people would stick around. These companies tend to have higher employee attrition rates and people’s tenure with the company tends to be short. Most ‘freshers’, or those who do not have a lot of job experience get into them without much of a plan on what they want their career path to be. The more senior folks get into these companies to try something new or switch industries before they see another big brand in the industry. Sadly, as a manager you can’t really do anything about this unless you change the culture of your entire organization. It is however possible to get employees to stick around if you have a great work environment and culture within the team or department. (But that’s another post for another day, so stay tuned!)

Photo by: Drew Blake